


a season of wounds

by staarked



Category: The Naturals - Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Genre: Angst, Book 3 Spoilers Maybe, Character Study, Drama, F/M, Romance, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 15:46:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6085524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staarked/pseuds/staarked
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He sees her more than he reads her. — Michael/Lia</p>
            </blockquote>





	a season of wounds

**Author's Note:**

> anonymous said: you're definitely not the only one who ships michael and lia. i actually see that you like grisha trilogy and already know you're writing fics for the couple but i was hoping that you'd do me a huge favour and write a short drabble for the darkling + alina 'i'd be alone too' scene as prompt. please. <3

_“Where were you when I was still kind?”_

 

 

— 

He sees her more than he reads her.

The manner she tiptoes her way out of his room before he can announce himself awake and the creases from where her body pressed on his sheets and even how insistently she sticks the volume at even digits to avoid him in afternoons.

Parts she doesn’t know she possesses because she sees everything that is there and can’t allow herself to see beyond everything that isn’t. It’s something that his father left him.

 

 

— 

She sits through the night with the video on repeat and looks for something, anything, with a desperate sort of determination that makes his head hurt and eyes strain with the effort it takes to catch up.

 “You should sleep.” She tells him, eyes fixed on the screen in a blatant disregard for his presence. As if he can’t tell the iron in her spine, the grief in her eyes, the weariness in everything she says and everything she doesn’t, can’t, won’t let herself. “It’s late.”

“ _You_ should sleep.” He intones because she doesn’t get to fall apart on him in this way, not when Cassie has buried an unknown woman in place of her mother, not when Dean’s off punishing himself for reasons beyond his reach, not when Sloane’s willingly _avoiding_ coffee, not when he’s across from her on the sofa with a bravado so fake that she’d be able to apiece it the second he voices it. If she can be bothered to.

 He reaches out and shuts the TV off with an audible click on the remote. Three and a half hours too late already. “I do mean it.”  

“Careful, Michael.” She taunts with venom she doesn’t feel, more out of obligation than any real intent, like it isn’t the trademark of the rela- equa- whatever it is that they share, along with impromptu arm wrestling matches and the bad habit of doing exactly opposite of what has been advised. “I might start to think you care.”

“Careful, Lia,” he waves the remote in front of her face and then away, watching the slightest of furrows emerge between her eyebrows. Barely there fury. “I might start to think that you’re one liners are a product of nothing but terrible teen sitcoms.”

It’s sickeningly satisfying when she lunges for him instead of the remote. Tipping her weight against his in a tangle of limbs and blind struggle that has him collapsing back on the surface. He distantly registers the sound of remote clattering to the floor and with his free hand he catches her by the wrist as he falls, dragging her down and atop him. Her head comes to rest on his chest, dark hair pooling, and she eases into him, despite herself. “Why can’t you leave me alone?”

He draws his fingers into her hair and for a sixty six fractions of a reality that isn’t, he knows peace looks a lot like this: “Then I’d be alone too.”

She looks up and he’s honestly sorry about how much sees, every single iota of hate and worry and distrust and loathing and pining and love, despite herself, despite himself. Just simmering beneath the weight of her silence. _Love._

 “Well, this has been cosy,” she snaps, pretence clicking back in place, and he can’t see anything that she doesn’t want to know but he can still feel things she’s not willing to a put a name on and he’s suddenly too old for this and she’s suddenly too young, “but I’d appreciate if you let me go.”

“Since when have you ever appreciated anything I have followed through?” He’s stalling he knows she knows. It’s pathetic in a way he’s never wanted to be.

“I’m no Sloane,” she begins, the muscles in her back stiffening in the coil of his arms, “but I can calculate the exact probability of you losing an organ or two by every passing second.”

He lets his arms drop to his sides and she gets up, unceremoniously, not quite able to meet his eyes. She walks away, shoulders bunched in tension and hair, a tangle she uses to hide her face.

 He sees her more than he reads her. Every expression, every movement, every memory catalogued carefully away at the back of his head. Amongst the other parts, she doesn’t realize, she leaves behind every time she leaves in the morning and every time she doesn’t come back at the night.

He’d like to explain the difference someday.

**Author's Note:**

> Can't help but ship it. I may or may not have a thing for girls being catty to cover up their vulnerability. On that non-thought, leave me a review, maybe?


End file.
